Properly categorizing an item listed in a database helps users who may wish to access the item find the item during browsing sessions or searches. However, it can often be difficult for users to properly categorize an item when placing it in the database. For example, sellers or other item listers may list an item for sale by adding item information to an online database. One piece of item information that the user may provide is a category for the item. This, however, can be challenging, especially when the user is not familiar with all possible categories (e.g., leaf categories) available. For example, a seller may know that the item that he is selling is a book, and may be able to select the general category “book” as an item category, but may not know that a deeper category of 19th century historical fiction books is available. As a result, there are a large number of items that are miscategorized.
This can be a significant problem in some areas such as online marketplaces. Miscategorized items often get demoted in a search result page and become hard to sell for the seller. On the other hand, for buyers, unrelated miscategorized items pollute the search result page and make it more difficult for the buyers to find items they really want. Past solutions to finding miscategorized items have suffered from the fact that algorithms used to identify an ideal category for an item are often inaccurate or rely on there being a very small number of possible categories with very strict and defined boundaries. As such, a better solution is desired.
The headings provided herein are merely for convenience and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the terms used.